I realize that the budget process is all about calculating expenses, but it’s extremely important to constantly be reminded of the many benefits to adding CAD models of your products to your Website in an interactive format. If this was nothing more than an expense with no ROI I can assure you that ThomasNet would not be in this business. The companies that have provided testimonials about this service are not huge companies, they are often medium sized companies looking to gain as many significant competitive advantages as possible over the major players in their industry.
The following “Top 10” list is a summary of the feedback from these clients:
1) Clients experience an almost immediate direct return on investment
2) Significant increases in new sales opportunities from companies directly inserting and specifying your products into their designs
3) Increases in customer retention by making it easier to work with you
4) Increased customer service efficiencies by providing an interactive product interface with CAD drawings generated on demand
5) Increases in Engineering efficiencies by virtually eliminating the need for your Engineers to respond to customer requests for CAD models
6) Shortening the sales cycles by providing information up front or on demand
7) Competitive advantage of providing information to customers up front that is typically gathered during the supplier evaluation process
8) Brand reinforcement. It’s a huge advantage to have Engineers specify YOUR Products instead of just a generic product into engineered drawings.
9) Strengthen relationships with major Engineering firms (not just individual Engineers or Purchasing Agents). We’ve had clients get requests for their entire CAD library in a format to install on every desktop/laptop in large engineering firms (i.e. hardcoded into their main frame)
10) We have clients telling us when they have their CAD models specified into a project they get the order at close rates upwards of 90%! No sales person can close sales at that rate!
One must always keep the following “truth” top-of-mind when considering this particular project: There will always be a significant value and competitive advantage associated with having your products specified into projects at the early stages of design engineering. In other words, this is not a short-term solution, this is a long-term business enhancement that everyone from Sales and Marketing to Engineering and Customer Service will benefit from implementing.
Contact me to become a part of this initiative.
Call me: 610-519-1830
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